To date, no one has been arrested or charged with the Aug. 17, 2010, arson fire in City Hall’s fourth-floor attic that led to massive water damage of walls and floors when the fire department doused the smoky blaze.

City departments continue to operate on a temporary basis in the former Lowell M. Maxham School at 141 Oak St, which has been updated in terms of air conditioning, handicap access, dedicated office space and security systems.

The City Hall building downtown at 15 Summer St. remains closed to the public.

The progress:

Providence architectural firm Durkee Brown Viveiros Werenfels presented an “executive summary, re-use study” to the City Council in August 2013 with details of three “building schemes” to renovate City Hall.

The price to enact those schemes ranged from $15 million to $23 million.

Council president A.J. Marshall said with the passage of time it’s inevitable those estimates have likely risen.

“It’s a concern that we’ll need to address,” Marshall said.

A major piece of the renovation project will be demolishing the Star Theater/Leonard Block building next to City Hall.

The city took possession of the dilapidated Star in September 2013, per order of a housing court judge who found prior owner Michael O’Donnell in contempt for failing to make structural repairs and remove junk from inside the four-story structure.

The construction contractor hired to raze the Star, however, has hit a roadblock.

For more than a month, the owner of the abutting New York Lace building has refused to allow BETA Group engineers from coming inside her property to finish their pre-demolition survey.

The city, in response, has filed a complaint in Superior Court against the owner seeking an order to allow BETA to finish the job, so that the demolition of Star Theater can begin; it eventually should take between six and eight weeks to safely knock down the 145-year-old building.

Eliminating the Star will make the job of reconstructing City Hall much easier, according to officials.

City Solicitor Jason D. Buffington said Friday he had no new information about the court case involving the city and New York Lace owner Dolores Milho and her attorney, Joseph deMello.

“You’d think it (the pre-demolition study) would be the easy part. But not in Taunton,” Marshall said.

Councilwoman Deborah Carr, who chairs the committee on public property, said Building Department supereminent Wayne Walkden has agreed to discuss the City Hall project on May 13.

She also pointed out that cost estimates from 2013 were based on criteria which, at the time, included the necessity to work around the Star Theater.